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This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hannah Rosen. Today, we have the second episode of No Easy Fix, our three-part series about why San Francisco,

one of the world's most innovative cities, can't seem to solve the very visible problems of homelessness and addiction.

If there was any series of tasks I could go through to get my best friend back,

I would go through hell.

Last week we met Evan, who finally made the decision to try and get off the streets.

Yeah, I'm like falling apart.

And in a way, I'm kind of glad, because it's kind of making me turn to, like, to stop.

If you missed episode one, I highly encourage you to go back and listen. This week, Evan takes his

first steps towards recovery, just as the city's mayor starts to implement a less-tolerant approach.

Reporter Ethan Brooks takes it from here.

Before Evan's life began to look how it does now. Before spending all day and all night chasing fentanyl,

it looked pretty normal. For a lot of people who are addicted and living on the street,

this is not the case. Even the idea of a stable life is kind of an abstract thing. But Evan had a good

job. He worked for his friend Joe in Northern California. He had an apartment and a family and a dream

of putting his son through college, something Evan's parents weren't able to do for him.

I've always been able to have a job in a house and everything and still have been able to use.

And when it got to the point of losing all of that, I was able to make the choice to not use anymore.

But when fentanyl took hold of him, when he lost the job and the apartment, part of him thought it was only a matter of time before the scale of that loss woke him up, forced him back on the right track. But it seemed to have the opposite effect. Losing all of that, you would think it would be more of an incentive not to be like this, but it's like the more I've

lost, the more I got like this. Like if you've lost the job and family and all that stuff,

what is there else to lose, kind of? This usually is called rock bottom. And the thing about that

phrase is that you pretty much only hear it when someone is telling a redemption story, their story of recovery, while so many people who reached this point, who made it all the way down to rock bottom, don't end up telling a story at all.

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